Listen to "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" by Yes, and sing along with the Simple HD lyrics on screen! Remember I DO NOT own this song! ALL RIGHTS
The end of winter, the Winter Solstice, her suppressed time of heat, the freezing winds of the First Umbral Moon and the celebration of love that occurred during it, all of that had passed with Zareen living two- no, tell it true, three lives.
The main life, the good life, was in the here-and-now. Watching Sarang and Ravi and Mede and Terbish and Nekhi grow, visiting with her friends and family, her carefully crafted tribe, and watching as they welcome their own children and grow and change and endure their struggles and growth. In this life, she smiles, she laughs, she loves as fiercely as she can, she dances and sings. It is a good life.
But it is a lonely life. She is surrounded by love, this is true. But she cannot help but feel the ache in her heart- the locked and barred connection in her soul that will never again be opened, the emptiness of the place that has held one, then another, then another, sometimes more than one at the same time, sometimes a single precious presence. It’s so terribly scarred, that part of her, damaged to the point where it is a jagged hole, surrounded by sharp edges and broken pieces that could too-easily pierce or tear at that unwary. She hides it well- after all, the rest of her life is fulfilling in ways she had stopped even dreaming it could be. But it’s there… and sometimes it aches and fills her with a hunger that has turned on itself, sinking sharp fangs into itself and singing in agonized and joyous screams as the venom races and burns through her veins.
That is the second life. The life of blood, the life of the Hunt, the life of chasing down whatever prey she can find- with or without someone at her side- and bleeding it, tormenting it, terrifying it past the point of fear into blindness and then descending upon it as a vengeful, reckless, terrifying creature whose humanity has been shredded away just as the hide of it’s prey has been. She eats of hearts and livers, she bathes in blood, she slips through the minds and souls as a mad goddess to bring ecstasies of agony until the very last moment of consciousness.
Innocent beasts do not interest her in this, though she will hunt them to protect her private sanctuaries and the people in the village that she retreats to sometimes. This second life is reserved for those the Sin Eater marks. Those that the bounty bills mark. Those that the Void has marked. They are shown the Jaguar with her heart turned inside-out and all those jagged edges pointed out to devour flesh and sorrow and too-late-repentance and finally, sometimes, the soul. She is not so twisted that she drinks in opposition to her laws as Sin Eater- but she also will forego a lesser prey for one that she knows she can keep back from the River in justice.
Those are the two lives she lives in the world. In the here-and-now. In the place of flesh and blood, laughter and sorrow, where the sun rises and sets and the moon rises and sets and the stars glitter.
The third life is the secret life. The third life is in her mind, though at times it bleeds through in nightmares and flashbacks that steal her breath or her attention during the day until she realizes she’s being looked at or spoken to and can escape back into the first life. The third life is the Labyrinth, where she has yet to find the door yet can spy through more and more cracks and crumbling walls. Never yet has there been a hole wide enough to step through and she is grateful for that for she knows herself- if she sees it, it will torment her curiosity until she tries to cheat her way into ‘just dipping a toe’ and perhaps losing herself altogether. For this reason, too, she does not seek the door too fervently. There is more than enough to see. She remembers, now, in a strange and detached way, that when she fell into the Void she was brought to a palace, a realm inside the Void that seemed enormous and always at war with it’s neighbors. Her time, she knows now, was roughly split into interminable eras:
First, she was an animal, a beast used to hunt and harry prey at the whim of beings she could not understand. She fell into this role too-easily at first, until pride returned, and with it reason and knowledge. She began to learn the language of her masters, listening, always listening, and planning, her cleverness against their complacency.
Second, she was a slave. A step above a beast, living in the palatial estates of whichever being held her metaphorical leash. That was the worst time, the time she endured the most, the time she moved from master to mistress to master, a living creature to twist and bend and use in whatever manner they wished for she was so easy to heal. As a slave, she learned of the transactional nature of the Void. As a slave, she learned survival in ways she had not had to learn upon the Source. As a slave, she had found her limits and been forced past them once she had been lifted to serve the nobility and been subjected to their unique and exquisite cruelties. They knew what she was, saw her too-clearly, and she suffered.
Third, a servant. As she had suffered, she’d learned. As she’d learned, she’d begun to make impressions. As she’d made impressions, she’d learned more. Her speech became refined, her keen huntress mind now stalking the halls of the body politic. She learned the art of subtlety, of flattery and lies and inner machinations. Of hiding behind lowered eyes and a smooth tongue and watching obliquely as her suggestions became her master’s ideas and were carried through into successes and failures. At last, in a moment of boldness that could have been her undoing, she’d struck.
Fourth, a noble- a position stolen just as the natives of the Void always stole them from each other. She walked the halls a different woman, a spy, breaking shackles in secret and laying in place plots and plans and traps with a delicate skill while wielding power ruthlessly and perpetuating the same agonies upon others that she remembered suffering herself. This was the worst to remember, this was the best to remember. These memories held the Zareen of the here-and-now entranced sometimes as she watched a woman that was herself but not herself- a twin… no, a doppelganger- move through that world in ways that Zareen herself had never mastered in this life.
She didn’t realize that as the memories surfaced, so too did some of the elements of that otherself. Moments where she would gain an aloof mein, calling to naughty children with the imperious tone of royalty that brooks no disobedience. Moments of silence where she found herself watching people in the cities and identifying them effortlessly as greater powers and lesser, simply knowing what she should do to ingratiate herself and make ally or crush enemy. There were the bad moments, too, of course. The moments of slavery, of being the hunting beast, of being the victim of torments. A barking laugh while she waited for her turn in one of the fighting pits reminding her of the Houndmaster… that had ended in her being pulled from the still body of her opponent and banned for a moon for acts she truly could not remember. She’d visited a brothel once, seeking to ease the ache in her loins and the itch in her skin for violent delights, but glimpsing a ham-fisted fool and a whore merely acting the part had made her so ill she’d rushed from the place and been violently sick. Which isn’t to say that the submissive who craved the darker side of sex and mastery was gone- truth being that she wanted it even more. Once she’d had a taste of too-far, she ached in a true and physical way sometimes to come close to it again. A private ache that she endured as the one she trusted to fulfill her desires, who enjoyed fulfilling her desires, wrestled with himself.
Three lives. One woman. Zareen knew something was going to give, eventually- those moments of slippage would likely get worse, or more frequent. Or the Labyrinth would seal itself away again and she would lose access to a part of herself that she wanted to know and understand despite the risks. Or the jagged part of her heart would start to devour the joy that she found in her first life- or cause her to become addicted.
She couldn’t help herself, it seemed. One way or another, she was always back to dancing on the edge of the blade, keeping time with whirling dervishes of song that flung her back and forth, leaping and landing on her toes with every beat of her heart a beat of the drum.
For this year’s FFXIV Write Month, I will be doing stories exclusively about Y’zareen’s time in the Void. These are connected to the stories:
The Obsidian Labyrinth
Foster
Aberrant
Scale
Baleful
Avatar
Adroit
Friable
Heady
Preaching to the Choir
Oneirophrenia
Commend (sequel to Oneirophrenia)
Thunderous
Crane
While they do jump around in the timeline, they are memories (or “Meanwhile, elsewhere”s) that Y’zareen is slowly and carefully uncovering as she begins to go through The Obsidian Labyrinth. This is based on headcanon that was created prior to the 6.X patches/series so may not perfectly jive with official canon. Due to the nature of the Void, many of these stories will feature disturbing content. Content Warnings will be tagged and posted at the top of each entry. Please enjoy!
The Queen Mother of the Court of Fleshly Delights, also called the Dark Court of Delights, also called “that domain of sick, deviant abominations live”, was stalking back and forth, back and forth, the sound of her many legs clicking on stone floors then muffled by deep-piled rugs was louder than it would have been naturally, driven by her consternation. That creature and all her delicious aether, all her power, had not yet yielded. She was not thriving, this much was true. Her time among the hunting beasts had changed her, made her more feral, more predatory… but the Queen Mother knew that the cunning behind those green eyes had been there long before the woman had landed in her domain. If that… that… well, she couldn’t remember who exactly had given her the idea to throw the woman to the hunting beasts, but once she remembered she would make them pay for making the woman a potentially more dangerous foe.
As she paced and seethed, the Crimson King, who was both her consort and her most deadly foe, opened the door to her private rooms and waltzed in without knocking. He had an insolent smile on his face under that wide-brimmed hat as he took in the destruction she had created before speaking.
“So, then, what’s all this?”
The Queen Mother rounded on him and pointed two arms and a leg at him. “Get out! Unless you have something useful to tell me, get the fuck out!”
She couldn’t tell, his face aside from his glowing red eyes was in shadow, but she had the distinct impression that he had raised an eyebrow. Before she could strike out, though, he swept into a deep, courtly bow that saw him removing his hat before rising to look at her clearly with those impossibly beautiful features. Damn him. Desire seized her, as it always did, and she knew he saw it as his eyes glowed more brightly.
“I do have…several ‘useful’ things for you, majesty, that I will be happy to remind you of shortly. However, I also have news. The Commander General, to whom you bequeathed the slave recently, is reportedly very cross. While he has seen nothing outwardly rebellious in the creature, he has suspicions that you granted her to him as some kind of trick.” He said, his expression bemused.
The Queen Mother crossed her arms, all of them, and snorted. “Of course I did. He’s a fool to think a gift from me would ever be anything else.” Pausing, she mused. “Plant the idea in his household that he should be more harsh on her. Push her. I want to know if he is strong enough to make her break where the Houndmaster could not.”
“Your will be done, majesty, as ever.” The King moved to replace his hat and half-turned.
“Wait.”
When he looked back, it was with a devious smirk and his free hand raising to tug the cravat at his neck loose.
Memories are predators- if you run, they cannot help but chase you, needing to tear their due from you by tooth and claw. The more you run, the sharper and hungrier they get... Until they have devoured you entirely and there is no more present, no more future, only the past.
Zareen knew these things intimately, they were her own words, spoken with love or firmness or a sharp snarl over and over again to those who refused to face the past, refused to face what they'd done or had been done to them and were suffering, suffering terribly, as a result.
She knew.
But as she looked at the great, vast obsidian wall containing a labyrinth of memories that she had only barely glimpsed in brief flashes of nightmare, or caught like the faintest scent of smoke in her waking bells, Zareen wanted nothing more but to run. To rise from her trance, dash the incense she was using to open her mind into scattered coals and dust across the floor, and run out into the daylight. Find something to fight. Someone to fuck. Or just run, and run, and run...
A deep breath- it trembled, no good.
Another deep breath- better.
A third- and her inner Self stepped up towards the Wall and touched her hand to it. There was a sound, like incomprehensibly massive bells tolling in a way that felt like gentle blows to her chest, and she was forced to stand for a moment as her own mental defenses blared warnings at her. The wall was in place for a REASON! SHE DID NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT LAY BEHIND IT!
It was true, that was the hardest part really. She didn't want to know. But wanting and needing are two different things, and Zareen had accepted that this would hurt. It would hurt terribly. If she moved too quickly, pushed too hard, it would break her irreparably as well. But there was no more running from herself- that had brought enough suffering to last many lifetimes, should she remain on this star for that long. This was something she needed to do. For herself. For those she loved. For the future to come. Because she knew one vital fact about what lay behind that Wall...
It was the Void.
Not a portal. Not what she had learned in all her years of combat.
The Labyrinth of Obsidian Walls held the memories of what had happened when she had thrown herself into the mouth of the Atomos... and woken up on the other side.
The initial crack, the one that the Seer had gazed into, was to the right of where her hand rested. Turning her back to it, keeping her fingers on the wall, she began to walk- to trace an unfathomable space inside herself and to prepare to, oh-so-carefully, allow her fingers and her Self to look through the cracks that she knew were there and see... and remember... and accept or atone for what she had done to survive in that place. That the Labyrinth was so vast, so very much larger than the longest-lived being's memory-scape that she had ever personally witnessed, made her shudder in awe and fear. How long had it been? A half-bell, maybe a bell, on this star, in this world.
How many eras had she trod upon the dead surface of that other world?
It had been a long, long time since she had felt compelled to give herself over to the sea. The water was grey and cold and the sunlight was dying as the tides were starting to fall. Zareen felt the cold distantly- her body acclimated fairly quickly and she kept herself warmish with strong strokes through the waves. Her goal was a distant rocky outcropping, large enough to house a hollowed-out section of rock that would give her a place to sit, stand, or lie when the tide rose again.
As she pulled her naked self out of the water and onto the stone, the rocks left small cuts on her hands, her feet, her belly where she accidentally scraped across a rough place. Her blood ran in little drips and drops, vanishing against the dark, wet stone and into the salty sea. Once on solid ground, she turned and looked at the sky. The setting sun. The lowering clouds that promised a chilly fall storm that night. The children would likely need lullabies when the thunder woke them long after darkness fell.
That was a thought for later- for the world of responsibilities and life and the routine and the mundane. For when she would go back to living for the others.
Right now… right now was for her. Locked away, shut away, hidden from the sight of land with only the grey and the cold and the ending day. As she heard the occasional scream of the wind in the upper portions of the cavern, her eyes slowly closed and she began to painfully- gods, so painfully- reach… Her emotions had always flowed so close to the surface, it felt so unnatural to feel them now pressed so far down, compressed, bound in ropes too-tight, covered over with layer after layer after layer of ‘not now’. Of ‘they need me to be calm’. Of ‘don’t feel it’. Of ‘be their safe place’. Of duty. Of love made oppressive with the weight of potential consequences. Of… fear.
She did not realize it when her hand pressed over her heart and her claws pricked her skin- she did not feel the small rivulets of blood trailing hot over her chilled skin. She stopped before she did any real damage… but sometimes the gods require a sacrifice to bend an ear and Zareen knew it all too well. Blood… and… as the layers were peeled away and the ropes strained… tears. That they were partly in relief was unexpected. There had been a certain perverse comfort in not allowing herself the freedom to feel in all her intensity but there had also been a sense of something missing. Something potentially lost.
The ropes strained as she became aware of her tears. As her eyes opened and she saw the blood. As she looked out into the dark sea and saw the distant stormclouds rising and rising and rising to dizzying heights and moving like ominous shadows in the dusk. As the sun suddenly hit the water just right…
The ropes snapped as the ocean was transformed into fire.
Zareen’s scream exploded from her, filling the cavern, filling the air. Filling the world. She spread her legs to set her feet and curled her hands into fists and took a breath so deep it made her light-headed and then she SHRIEKED. Control snapped. Aether exploded from her in a column that rose up and up and up to bore a hole through the stone, to pierce the heavens, to demand the respect of the stars, to command that they Witness.
She let loose another cry. Another. Another. She fell to her knees and dug her claws into the stone so they gave off sparks and her back bowed as she wailed. She tasted blood, spat it into the sea- an offering. Another offering. A sacrifice laid before the gods as she begged them in her wordless shrieking wails to notice her, to hear her, to see her, to be there. Oh, oh, please be there. Fire and lightning flickered and arced around her and shadows flowed like water so deep that her body on hands and knees was nearly submerged in it. Her figure rapidly shifted between woman and goddess, miqo’te and primal, Zareen of the Jaguar and Zareen the Jaguar, until one was the other and the other was one.
The tears scalded. Her blood steamed. She beat her fisted hands against the stone and ripped at her hair and tore her jewelry off, flinging it into the walls of the cavern with all of her strength, heedless of value or rarity- though nothing made it into the sea. Perhaps the gods were looking down at her, in their own way. She did not feel them- she was lost in her own storm, ripped apart down to her very core, reforming and shredding over and over and over again as the last several moons- the last couple of years- the last decade of her life- the spirits of her ancestors reaching back millenia set claws and fangs into her and tore and rent and stripped her down past skin, past blood and muscle and bone, past aether, down to her very self and then down some more.
The screams still echoed- would likely always echo, now, imprinted upon this place. The woman-thing laid on her side, barely breathing, heart beating out of control, gold eyes filled with tears. Or blood. Or the sea. Or her soul. She looked like a broken doll. Cast aside- or maybe just lost, loved so much she was threadbare and hanging together with a prayer, a prayer she had forgotten.
Everything has a price.
EVERYTHING HAS A PRICE.
A truth fundamental. A law of the universe, immutable. A mystery, borne through generations and reinforcing it’s truth with the same inevitability as the waves rolling in and withdrawing… as the sun rising and falling. As the seasons changing. The sun sank beneath the waves, slowly, so slowly, and as the stars began to shine in patches of clear sky between the clouds, the darkness felt so very complete. A blanket to wrap herself in and lie here and dissolve to become seafoam.
They’d won. They’d WON. They had done the impossible- they had stood in defiance against the dark and though it had not left any of them unscarred, they had won. The jubilation that still flared inside her breast at that thought was undeniable- she had not had to say goodbye… she had not had to gently and lovingly deliver mercy in the only way she could. She had not had to look into the eyes of her family and see their grief, their guilt, their pain, or… or their recriminations. She had worn herself down, given her all, kept her promises while still giving every bit of her experience, her skill, her passion, her power…
And they had won.
Two souls still walked this star in defiance of the dark. Two lives that could go on to change and shape others- bring hope, and love, and burn bright. So bright.
It was a victory unlike anything she had ever known.
Perhaps that was why it did not feel like a victory. They had done the impossible.
She had challenged the gods and won.
...What did that make the gods?
Her eyes slowly, slowly, moved to fix on the stars. Unfamiliar stars that had become familiar- a way to guide her to the home-that-is. Stars that had never seen a little island in the middle of a temperate sea and the home-that-was. Stars that did not hold the memory of her people. That was only her. Only her. Only her.
They were dead. Dead and gone into the River and into her memory and into the voices of her soulstone. Grief is not something you feel once and then turn your back on, healed and whole and hale- it is the sea. You learn to swim. But sometimes a wave rises and drags you under. She was in the depths, far beyond the reach of light, floating in that place. Around her a jungle- dark, light, beautiful, deadly, vibrant with life and song, strewn with viscera and stinking of death.
All lost. All gone save for what she held precious in cupped hands, huddled over like the last tiny spark of hope.
All because they had never considered the impossible. All because they had chosen to live and die the way they had always lived and died. All because they had witnessed something never before seen and chose to rely on the ancient rather than questioning if the unknown must be met with the unknown. For all they spoke of ‘risks’, of ‘dancing with death’, of ‘living to the fullest’- in the end… in the end they had died rather than try to find another way. They had sacrificed a child to the ancient knowledge, demanded the ultimate price, damned a soul, and… for what?
In the end, for what?
So that a lone survivor, alone in a world that she was not made for and that was not made for her would sacrifice herself again… and again… and again… in the name of the fallen. Of the ancient. Of tradition. Thinking herself doomed and damned forever and always. Thinking herself unworthy. Thinking herself… thinking she had no ‘self’ beyond the blade, the calling, the sacrifice, the tribe, the dark, the war that could not be won. A child raised up- then dragged down, torn apart, remade in the image of futile hope- and then set adrift when her purpose was fulfilled.
“Set us free.” They had instructed her and when she had given them her obedience unquestioning they had bound her in chains, and chains, and chains. She WAS the Price. And when she had done all they had asked- all they had ever asked- they had left her all alone… with their chains… their sins… their failures… their doom. And she had accepted it all as her due. As her fate. As her duty. All with a devil-may-care smile and a shrug and toss of her head.
Everything has a price.
Her head turned and she wept brokenly into the sea-smoothed stone as she allowed herself to realize and accept the lie. The great lie. The great betrayal- greater than Arden by magnitudes, greater than anything she had known or dreamed or feared.
She had lost everything… for nothing. For the fears of a short-sighted people who valued their doom so much they had abandoned hope. So much blood. So much suffering. For what?
For one, lonely, lost figure to stand in the ashes and bear it all. To be their sacrifice. To bleed forever- and then, to fall. To fall alone. To embrace her own damnation with no one there to give her the same mercy she had offered. Forgotten.
AND ALL OF IT FOR NOTHING.
The woman-thing had no more voice to scream- but the cavern echoed with her screams anyway. Aether whipped into a frenzy, maddened, wild, uncontained, unformed- it was her voice. Her fists beating against the walls. Her heart beating against her ribs. The wind screamed for her. Thunder cracked and rumbled and roared. Flames reached for the sky in supplication. And she mourned- she mourned the sheer, stupid, horrible futility of it all. She mourned for her people. She mourned for herself. She mourned for futures cut short because the past could not be left behind.
She mourned for the lie. She mourned for her faith. She mourned for the fantasy- it had been painful and terrible in so many ways but it had been a comfort, too, because it meant that all she had done and sacrificed, all her pain, her sweat blood and tears, her fears, her nightmares, her scars uncountable… they had meant something.
Curling up tighter into a ball, she shivered in the dark and every tremor made a horn scrape against the stone. The sound was like madness, scratch scratch scratching at the edges of her psyche. Tip-tip-tapping with her own black claws. She already had cracks where it had slithered in but it played with her anyway, teasing at the parts of herself that had always been so strong, so confident, so full of passion and hope and pride. She trembled.
((Music: https://youtu.be/qOMQxVtbkik and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpFKPVquSeA&t=331s ))
“I’m out of time.”
They’d all known it was coming but hearing the words spoken out loud had an extra weight to them like the toll of a deep bell. The look in her brother’s eyes as he said them was something she’d seen so, so many times and it never ceased to affect her, tugging at part of her very soul- her purpose for life. In this case, though, she would not be offering gentle mercy, gods willing. This time, she would be leading a Hunt, she would lead a pack to stand in defiance of the dark and fight. In a way, it was a good thing to finally be able to do something- no more waiting, no more uncertainty, no more second-guessing or sleepless nights staring at her ceiling or the strange moon with her hand wrapped around her soulstone so hard it left impressions in her skin as she begged for more knowledge- for anything that might be the key to turning the tide.
Just once. Please, gods, just once let this not be goodbye.
The Xaela had looked so fragile, so afraid. Tormented. He had been so very strong for so long, buying them all the time they had needed to prepare. She wanted to comfort him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight- but neither of them could risk what might happen if she drew so close. Not when her instincts and the thing inside of him were so volatile. So she had swallowed down everything- all her fears, all her hurt, all her grief, all her uncertainty. She had sat out of reach and purred comfort, sung comfort, gently embraced him in as much of her loving care as she could to offer him a few precious moments of peace- and as his pain visibly eased she had watched him. Memorizing every detail- every little mannerism, the fall of his hair, the way light moved over his skin and scales, the way his features looked in profile and when he looked over at her. His body, the way he moved, the movement of his tail, his scent, all gathered in and placed gently in memory. When she felt secure she would not forget, she had gazed around the house with the same care- it was all so precious. It was all so fragile. The wood spoke, the air spoke, the mingling of individual scents, the ghosts of every-day routine moving around her in comforting mediocrity. She hadn’t once taken it for granted, not when her place here was so uncertain. Now she was glad of that, in a way. It meant she would have many memories to return to in the empty, lonely bells that may lie in her future.
When he thanked her, she wanted desperately to promise him that it would be okay. But she could not tell such a lie and he would not thank her for it even if she could.
Returning to her room that night had never been so hard.
--------- A few days later --------
The Jaguar knelt in a circle of items that had not been seen nor touched since before she had made her sacrifice, with a padded box set to her side so she might carry everything safely to the ritual site. Sacred relics of her fallen people, some of them ancient- carefully cared for through generations, the knowledge of their use kept safe through song and story impressed upon the carriers of certain soulstones. She had turned off the lights in her room and conjured a small, floating flame. It was as close as she could get to the warm firelight that brought out the beauty and mystery of the tools and the memories that moved through her mind. First, the hanging censers…
The Jaguar lifted six of them from the collection, turning each on it’s chains so the bells softly rang as she examined them closely. The firelight was captured in the small chips of precious stones, flashing brilliance in the shadowed dark. Setting them carefully into the box, she ensured they were well-packed before moving to the next.
Melody, smiling with her tufted ears wiggling. The floof of her tail swaying. The way it felt to have the young woman sit and lean against her- trusting her. Loving her. Niece. Doing her very best to keep her head up despite the recent pain of not just grief but the loss of her innocence. Her pride when she held one of her creations for Zareen to see.
“I love you unconditionally and I always will.”
The carefully blended and pressed resin incense was next, lifted to her nose as her eyes close to inhale the complex scent. It had taken her so, so long to get the blend correct- especially since she had only had three cakes to compare against the ingredients she could get her hands on here. Setting down one of her crafted discs, she picked up one of those crafted on the island and took a deep inhalation again. Not quite exact- it could not be. But she could feel the rightness of it, feel the latent power waiting for the touch of flame to release the smoke that would act to steady her ritual-craft. Packing the discs and the charcoal that they would rest on in the box with gentle hands, her fingers lingered for a moment before she brought one to her nose again.
A memory. She was a ghost, standing to the right side of a Jaguar huntress as she worked mortar and pestle to grind down and blend the ritual mixture. Her ingredients, small mounds of herbs, little clay jars of liquid, flowers and stalks, all set carefully around her. As she worked, Zareen could hear her voice speaking in an ancient version of the Jaguar tongue, explaining each ingredient, the proportions, the preparations they must undergo before mixing, all the details that an apprentice would need to know. Step by step. When the memory faded, she had been able to smell the finished blend with clarity.
Zareen’s gold eyes opened and she took a deep breath, verging on the edge of tears. How many times had she begged her soulstone to show her a way to save her people? Her loved ones? How many years had passed in despair when it gave her only silence. She realized, now, why that was. She had been asking the wrong questions. There was no “way” to save someone from the dark. There were only small flickers of hope. Small things that might, if one were brave and committed, illuminate one of the many steps along a path that may, possibly, lead to victory.
The gods were good. Sometimes. The gods were cruel. They demanded much and often gave little. She knew there would be a price for what they were going to do- each of them would pay in their own way. Each of them had been given the chance to change their mind- even Ayanga. Each of them had expressed their desire to take the chance, to challenge fate. To take the gamble. To leap.
He’d listened to her carefully, his eyes not meeting hers as he thought about what she was saying. It was clear he wasn’t entirely happy with what he heard, but when she was done, his odd pale eyes with their black sclera moved to her face and he nodded. He expressed his gratitude for all that she was doing and though he slipped back into uncomfortable, awkward silence after she knew when the time came he would fight the same way she would.
Tolemy... let there be time for us. Let there be a chance to see...
Her eyes moved to the jewelry she would wear for the ritual. It, too, was ancient. The filigree open-work was less evident, the craftsmanship favoring a more simple design. Stylized figures of jaguar, the rising sun, and the rising moon are barely able to be made out. The gemstones set in the gold still have all of their shine, despite their age. The one open setting awaits her soulstone. She will place it when she arrives at the cave and begins the cleansing and preparations there.
“I barely got this second life-- I should’ve been dead a dozen times over by now, so I just want folks to know I didn’t have any regrets with this part of the life I’ve lived, and I don’t want them to regret it either.”
Amaranth’s irrepressible smile as she said the words had brought an echoing expression to Zareen’s lips. The Jaguar couldn’t express it, didn’t have the words, but that smile reminded her of so many she had known. The faces were different- slit-pupiled eyes framed in brightly-colored hair looking at her with that devil-may-care grin. ‘Death comes for all of us.’ said that grin, ‘May as well have as much fun as we can before it catches up!’ She had grinned that way before. Sometimes, she still did. It was bittersweet- it made part of her yearn for earlier days, days when she had nothing to lose and everything to gain, days when she had seen every minute of life as a new adventure and a dare- live fast, live free, live fierce, laugh at Death as you dance one step ahead. She prayed that her friend would manage to find that smile for as long as possible.
Putting the jewelry into a velvet bag, she set it into the box tenderly. Her eyes moved to the final item and her ears lowered even as a soft smile bloomed on her lips. She lifted the knapped obsidian blade, turning it so the firelight glowed through the thin, impossibly sharp glass. Her hand fit the wrapped gold wire on the hilt easily, as if it were made for her. Her head tilted a little as she slowly twisted it back and forth, gazing into the shadow-made-real.
A pair of too-bright violet eyes, or blue. Green. Red. Scarred into white. Empty sockets.
A hand held in hers, clinging tightly in desperation so claws pierced her skin. Holding loosely with a lack of strength. Gently pressing skin-to-skin as if to comfort her as much as she comforted them. Slick with blood. Cold with fear. Thin-skinned with age. Too small...far too small.
A voice, whispering in quick, pained gasps. Pleading. Broken by sobs. Empty of all emotion- too far gone into the dark to hold any more. Resigned. Gentle. Young and scared. Old and content. Moving without sound, voiceless but speaking still. Requests for the end, for messages left too late, for regrets unable to be overcome, for sins unforgiven, for loves lost, for comfort to those that remain. Tales, stories of lives lived, spoken with the hope that they might be remembered, that they will find their place in the stars, that they will be carried on in the hearts of those who carry on. ‘Remember me, remember me, remember that I walked on this star. Remember that I lived, and laughed, and loved. Do not let me be lost, do not let me be forgotten.’
The taste of blood. Tears. Rot. Sweet herbs. Salt. Alcohol. Life lived. Life lost. All that was and all that might have been. An inhalation- drawing it all in, feeling it coil and curl inside, feel it seep into every part of her soul, feel it become part of her. Feel them calm, feel them let go of the fear, the anger, the tension, the sadness, the past, the future. Feel the grip of their hands grow gentle, every one.
Whispering the words- her tongue forming them, her mind forming them, her soul forming them into shapes and sounds they knew from their earliest memories. Watching the calm fall over them. Acceptance. Even hope. Wielding the spell, the blade, sliding it gentle and painless until it kissed the heart. The final breath.
The silence.
She slowly lowered the blade, resting it on her palm before gently and carefully putting it in the special part of the box prepared for it. It is delicate, and it is vital for what is to come. The box is closed, latched, aether woven around it for protection and security. Zareen moves it aside, gathers up the other items that will be kept for another day and puts them away in the chest where she keeps that which is precious to her. Rising, she turns and walks to the closet, opening the doors and leaning in to press her fingers against one of the back panels. It slides away, revealing a different kind of box. Dusty in a way that none of her things ever are. Hidden here where it should have been forgotten, found by one of the future generations perhaps. Or lost forever.
For the first time, her hands shake and she gently closes them into fists, closing her eyes.
Her brother’s eyes, crimson and pink, looking at her with a gentle pleading.
“I can’t go through another night like the last one, not and still fight.”
She whispered the words she had spoken to him. “I will stop you befoah you hunt anehone. I sweah this to you on all that is above and below.”
A single blue eye looking into hers as the box is handed to her. “Whatever you need to do, do it.”
Eyes opening again, the Jaguar gazed into the dark closet and sighed. Leaning forward, she drew the box out and set it on the floor. Opening it revealed a collar-style necklace, glowing faintly blue along the magitek surface, the ceruleum light pulsing slowly. Matching cuff-like bracelets, two of them, rested in their own divots in the padding. They, too, glowed and pulsed in perfect time with the necklace. She picked up one of the bracelets and her wrist twinged with sensory memory- the feel of the metal biting and chafing as she turned it, and turned it, and turned it unconsciously as it seemed to weigh more and more and more. There were no tears- she had shed a lifetime’s worth for those losses. Turning the bracelet in her hand, her fingertips found the simple pad that would activate the necklace when aether was passed through it. It would take only the smallest amount- a breath, no more. The restraint would render the one wearing the collar immobile. Not for long. Just… just long enough. Just long enough to say goodbye.
Her eyes are unfocused, gazing into the distance as she feels the weight settle heavy on her shoulders. It is familiar. So familiar. Sun after sun, season after season, year after year… era after era…
Twi, holding her hand, squeezing her hand with a gentle firmness. “Whatever you will become, whatever you think have become… you are still our Y'zareen.” Falling into a hug, held and holding, a moment of terrible, terrible vulnerability met with a loving kindness that gently provided a balm to a wounded heart.
“... Thank you, sisteh. Thank you. I love you vereh, vereh much.” She whispers.
“I l-love you too,” she replied.
She refocuses, setting the bracelet back into the box for now and closing it, carrying it over to the other box and setting it on top. It would be one of the last things done, that it might not chafe at already raw spirits. As she looked at the two boxes, she felt a sudden spike of intense icy fear that caught her breath and made her press a hand to her chest as she gasped and her eyes widened. It is a surprise but the unexpected pounding of her heart in her ears and the chill in her fingers and toes is almost...welcomed. Eyes fluttering slowly closed, she breathes a prayer of gratitude. If she can still feel fear, then she is not past hope. One doesn’t fear the inevitable. One fears uncertainty. And that means that, in her heart of hearts, she still holds hope. Irrepressible hope. Hope that has kept her alive, over and over, giving her the strength to take that fear and make of it a weapon named Courage.
She would have to show the others how to do the same. They would need this of her. This is not a fight she can win by throwing herself into the dark. Never again, that. They needed her to be better. To move past her mistakes. To rise above her insecurities. To be the light, the guide. It was her last chance and she knew it. Whether they succeeded or failed, how she carried herself and the choices she made, the way she led them would set the course of her future. Redemption or damnation. A small smile touches her lips. This, too, is familiar- feet light and fleet, spinning and swaying and leaping on the edge of the blade.
Please, gods… Please, let me be worthy, just this once.
Turning slowly, her eyes move around the room- her little attic room, made cozy but still not quite “home”. It was a good place, though. It had been a sanctuary and she was grateful. Walking down the stairs, the house was very, very quiet in those bells before dawn. Moving like a shadow herself, the Jaguar walked through each room, gathering them into her memory and her heart. She did not linger in her brothers’ bedroom, passing through to where the children slept in a way that would not bother the men- it was something she did often when they needed an extra hand to soothe or care. Pausing by each little bed, she allowed herself the tears as she watched each little chest rise and fall. Memorized the curve of their cheeks, the gentle expressions they wore as they dreamed, the soft scents they gave off, the small hands that would someday shape the future.
At the bed her twin girls shared, Zareen sat on the edge and reached out to stroke the thick black hair and brush the back of her fingers butterfly-light across their cheeks. Her Hope and Dream. A terrible pain speared her heart and her eyes closed, head bowing and hand covering her mouth to catch the sob that threatened to escape her. Taking a few breaths, shaky at first before steadying, the Jaguar rose and leaned to kiss each of them, whispering inaudibly in her mother-tongue. “I love you. Always.”
She left the room as silently as she’d entered it, walking back up to the attic and sitting down at the window. The moon, strange and too-bright, shone down on her and she gazed up at it, golden eyes glowing. Bells passed...and as the moon lowered and the sun started to rise, she prayed. She prayed blessings, she prayed apologies, she prayed her dreams and her plans. She poured a river of heart-offerings into the liminal place between night and day where the Dark Lady and the Bright could both hear. The place where she walked, both and neither.
The sky grew brighter, the tops of the waves going gilded, and Zareen closed her eyes and wiped the tears from her cheeks. They would be the last she would shed until the matter was done. Taking a slow breath and letting it out softly, she went to that place inside her where the jungle trees rose to impossible heights and a pool of darkness reflected the storm-tossed sky above, lightning dancing through the roiling clouds. One of the trees, huge and wide, held an opening in the roots- a passageway. There was a sanctuary there, a healing place. But there was a deeper place, too. A hidden way. Zareen floated above the inky pool, one foot touching the surface as her hair flowed above her and her head tilted back to gaze at the sky before she closed her eyes and let go.
A shift, a breath, and her head snapped down as gold eyes opened and she sprang forward, throwing herself into a leap, a dash, a run that carried her across the surface of the pool, splashes rising behind her and staying, frozen in time. Half-way to the shore, she jumped high and sure and sloughed her skin, landing true on four huge paws, already running, racing with her tail a flag behind her and her wild eyes fixed on the tree. The passageway irised open as she threw herself into it, diving into the dark.
Huntress. Jaguar. Sin Eater. Weapon. Blade and shield. Killer and protector, healer and devourer. Dancer on the edge of the blade. Wild laughter in the face of death.
A predator from an unbroken line of predators stretching back into the mists of time.
Prayers given form.
She Who Catches Demons in Her Teeth.
(( Tagged for mention: @talesfromthegameff14 @ala-mhinyan @realmoffantasy as well as Twi and Amaranth who do not have Tumblr))
The servants that showed Zareen to her new quarters were cowering creatures- she had tried to speak to them at first only to have them flinch every time she’d open her mouth. They had been inherited upon her ascension and after her own experiences she could understand the reactions to a degree. What was unnerving is that she had been one of them only a very short time ago. Had it been what she’d done that had inspired such fear? Or was it simply a part of Court life that one’s rise coincided with an increase in wanton cruelty?
A puzzle for another time.
For now, the miqo’te stood in the center of her new suite, gazing around at the decor with a slight wrinkling of her nose. The Lord General had enjoyed his skins and trophies, she knew that from his lodge. His quarters in the Queen-Mother’s Hall were not too much different, though there were touches of a more sumptuous nature here. Ones that made her head tilt in curiosity as she began to move around the room.
Slaves and servants both watched her discretely and the weight of their gazes as she tried to explore became too much. Her dismissal was met with blank, confused faces. A Lady was never without at least one slave to do her bidding. It was not done. Zareen, adamant, repeated her dismissal and they slowly trickled out, glancing at each other in fearful bafflement. What strange creature were they bound to now?
Once they were gone, Zareen took a deep breath and let out a sigh, running her hands over her short hair before dropping them to her sides and continuing to roam around the suite. Sitting room. Bedroom. Bathing area. An unadorned room with very thick stone walls that she could feel the pain emanating from. A small kitchenette. And a closet. A very large closet, she came to find, walking in several fulms and finding it extended into a storage area that held not only attire from the recently-fallen Lord but personal items. Trinkets. Furnishings. Many of them were not things that the Lord General would have ever displayed in his lodge. Beautiful, eerie sculptures. Glasswork. Plush chairs with velvety upholstery. Finely carved side tables and elegant lamps. There was no dust here so it was impossible to say how long these things had been in storage, but as she slowly trailed her fingers over some of the smooth surfaces she had a distinct sense of the weight of ages collected on their tops or in their curves.
Eventually, she came to a stop in front of a type of screen. Similar to ones she’d seen in Ul’dah, it had hinges that allowed it to open into three panels and the scrolled wood-work at the top, along the sides, and on the feet was beautiful- and not only beautiful, but light. A light wood. Something she hadn’t seen at all since her arrival in this place. The woodgrain was beautiful, the varnish still shiny, but the surface of the screens themselves was an unpleasant and disappointing matte black on both sides. Zareen’s ears lowered back as she pulled the screen out of the place where it had been shoved, behind a few other pieces of furniture, and opened it up fully to look it over. It was utterly incongruous- that gorgeous frame that was a mark of care and craftsmanship- even love- holding uninspired, empty, soulless black.
The miqo’te gazed at it from several fulms away before approaching it and running her fingers over the matte surface. She tapped her claws against it, then knocked. Wood, unmistakably. Perhaps it could yet be saved, then. Something inside her, something she had successfully caged in and silenced for so long she had almost forgotten it, suddenly sent a sharp pain through her heart that made her gasp and curl one hand in the ragged fabric on her chest. The light wood is what had done it. She suddenly, desperately, needed color. Something that was not venous blue or crimson red or venomous green or rotten brown. Something light. Something… something that would remind her of the near-forgotten glow of sunshine.
Her claws dragged down the black surface too lightly. They scratched the paint and left a mark, but she could feel she was not yet at the wood layer. No shavings. She did it again, hand shaking, trying to be careful. The result was much the same. The paint was extremely thick, layer after layer after layer built up. Realizing that set Zareen off and she attacked the screen with both claws in a frenzy, slicing and slashing, trying to curl her claws under to lift as much of the paint off in each stroke as she could. It felt unnervingly like cutting at the toughness of scarred skin.
She saw it and felt it at the same time. Claws against smooth varnish. Drawing her hand back quickly so she didn’t cause too much damage, she looked at the shine under the ilm-and-a-half-thick layer of paint and felt something in her heart, something she couldn’t define.
From there, it was only a matter of time. She kept going with her claws at first, then realized there may be tools better suited somewhere else in her rooms. The only one she was able to find that felt sturdy enough was a strong metal spatula in the kitchenette. It was not perfect, but she couldn’t stop herself from working. It felt… it felt like survival. Like she needed this or something in her would die away forever. She refused to stop even when the fruits of her labor started to reveal themselves. A glimpse wasn’t enough. She needed it to be obvious, tangible, undeniable.
And when she was shaking too badly with fatigue and her hands were lightly bloodied from wrestling with the spatula and her fingertips throbbed painfully, the miqo’te woman finally stepped back from the screen and looked over what she had accomplished. The sight drew a high, drawn-out keening from her throat as she collapsed to her knees and tears began to roll down her cheeks.
Painted sunshine, gold and orange and red. A lake. A crane painted in glorious detail. Soft blue sky darkening to shades of purple to mark sunset. Fishes in the shallow water around the crane’s feet. The scene only a small part of the whole screen but in that small part, in that small image under caked paint, Zareen world was unmade and made and unmade again. She remembered. And it hurt. Gods, gods it hurt. And the pain was glorious.
“I request a duel. I have been wronged by the Lord General.”
The silence that fell on the previously-raucous assembly was immediate, all-encompassing, somehow thunderous. The Queen-Mother and the Crimson King both looked, briefly, stunned at the sheer audacity before the King’s eyes slid to his monarch and he gave her a smirk that said clearly ‘I told you so.’ The rest of the Court- from Lord and Lady to slave and pet- just stared at the servant who now knelt before the dias. Her head was properly bowed, her kneel properly low, her voice properly respectful. The words were clear and the phrasing was precise.
What was outrageous was that she was a servant who had stepped forward to make her request and lay forth her accusation against the very Lord who had trained her in such manners. That a servant would challenge a Lord at all simply Was Not Done. Not only for reasons of protocol, but because it was a death sentence. Servants were servants for a reason- they were not strong enough to become gentry but were more useful than slaves. The Lord General was no push-over, either. He had come by his title more-or-less honestly.
As the Queen-Mother stared down at the miqo’te who knelt before her, the courtiers began to whisper, a sibilant sound that curled like smoke around the corners of the room. Generally, it was unwise to accommodate the rabble- one could not have the lesser thinking they can just go about challenging whomever they pleased. However, there was a certain perverted pleasure that the monarch could not deny feeling- the Lord General had spent eons ruining this poor creature’s world only to have said creature destroy his work in an act of madness. And now, said creature was here, requesting the opportunity to do it all over again to the Lord that had been forced to teach her how to survive and thrive in the world of the Court. She would die terribly, of course. The Lord General was brutish and lacked finesse but his torments were undeniably effective. And the miqo’te was sure to know the full weight of them before she was allowed to succumb.
It would be entertaining, at least.
The Queen-Mother finally lifted her gaze and looked around the room, noticing the absence of the named Lord. Interesting. The servant must have slipped away for just this opportunity. An extraordinary risk to take when so much was on the line for her. The Queen-Mother gave a sharp clap. “Someone bring the Lord General to me. ...I have chosen to hear this request.”
((Sequel to Prompt 13. TW: Blood, TW: torture (minor) ))
Zareen had always been comfortable in her own skin but standing before the assembled courtiers and the monarch and her consort, she truly felt naked. She was shaking, badly, so weak she could barely keep on her feet. Her body was a shell of itself- bones showed clearly through skin stretched tight over them by near-starvation, all of her soft curves burned away in her body’s desperate bid for survival. The gilded collar rubbed harshly against her collarbones and the shackles on her wrists could almost slide off her hands.
Worst yet, her hair had been shorn sometime recently in her captivity and she could not remember when. Long enough ago that the growth was perhaps two or three ilms. It was that insult, that incredible insult to her person, that was giving her the sheer energy of rage that allowed her to keep her feet and keep her head upright, green eyes glaring defiantly as she looked around the room at the monstrous beings around her.
The Queen-Mother, one of the only two beings in the room that was a splash of color in the near-monochrome group in an overly-elaborate gown the deep blue-purple of venous blood, moved up to Zareen in a sinuous motion. One of her hands reached up to caress Zareen’s cheek in a proprietary manner that immediately made the miqo’te snap at her. The courtiers gasped as one but the Queen-Mother only laughed in delight, especially when the sharp motion threatened Zareen’s delicate sense of balance and she swayed in place.
“Such spirit. I really must commend you- my huntmaster has never failed before to bring a beast to heel. You made him so angry he screamed himself hoarse…” Her voice trailed away and the courtiers laughed in the pause, just as she had intended. One of them is a little too loud and laughs a little too long and the Queen-Mother’s eyes flick to them as another hand gives a subtle gesture to her consort. The Crimson King doesn’t move, but four ill-defined shadowy figures encircle the offending Lady and drag her away, kicking and screaming and flailing, begging for forgiveness.
There is a beat of silence before the Queen-Mother smiles and begins walking around Zareen, observing her from all angles as she shakes and struggles. Impossibly long nails- or perhaps sharpened bone?- trail across Zareen’s hipbone and along her lower back just hard enough to leave a red mark without breaking thin skin. “You really are remarkable, you know. So delicate but with such strength riding just below the surface. You really are wasted in the kennels though you did so very well in the last Great Hunt. Barring that… unfortunate display, of course.” Several of the courtiers shifted uncomfortably at the memory but the Queen-Mother continued on.
“You really did leave me no choice, refusing to even apologize.” She paused, looking at Zareen expectantly. Zareen just stared back, eyes narrowed and dangerous, ears pinned back. There was no way in any of the hells- including this one- that Zareen would admit that she had no idea what was being said to her. The language grated on her ears and in her soul though she had heard enough of it now to at least start to understand the inflections of emotion and expectation. She knew the monarch expected a reply and she might have done so had it not revealed her ignorance. Every weakness, no matter how insignificant it seemed, could and would be exploited in this place and Zareen knew it. So she kept her silence- and the silence stretched between them.
And stretched.
And stretched.
The Queen-Mother’s anger palpably grew in the room, making the small space feel oppressive.
Finally, the Crimson King spoke up in his rolling voice, tone almost lazy. “It appears the cat has her tongue, Your Majesty.”
Silence amongst the assembly, breath held, then the Queen-Mother let out a laugh and everyone immediately laughed along save for the miqo’te in the center of the room. “So it does, my love. So it does. Let us remedy this, hm?” She turned her eyes to one of the figures behind Zareen and beckoned. Two tall Lords walked forward to flank the miqo’te and her eyes flitted from one to the other. They dwarfed her, easily 8 fulms or so a piece and built wide and heavy. The Queen-Mother gave another gesture and the two Lords moved smoothly in a way that suggested they had done this many times in the past. One stepped behind Zareen and grappled her, pinning her arms to her body and lifting her off her feet in a smooth motion. The other grabbed her head in a huge palm, pinching her nose shut as the other hand pried at her jaw. Zareen was weak from her privations but she thrashed and fought violently and earned several pained grunts from well-placed strikes of her heels. The lack of air and her general state, though, meant she was forced to open her mouth to take a breath, which allowed the huge Lord to wrench her jaws open as wide as they could go. She screamed and roared and the Queen-Mother smiled before reaching into Zareen’s mouth and grabbing her tongue in a vicious grip. Claws of sharpened bone curved and slashed and the miqo’te gurgled and tried not to choke as she was unceremoniously dropped to the floor where she promptly collapsed.
Her body didn’t have the extra moisture required for tears but her eyes burned as she curled up protectively, swallowing the blood as quickly as she could not only to keep from choking on it but because she was so, so thirsty. The Queen-Mother held Zareen’s tongue in her claws and gave a thoughtful hum before devouring it in neat bites, expression making it clear she was savoring the treat immensely. The last bite she turned to feed to her consort, the Crimson King making much of licking the blood off her claws. When he was finished, he leaned in and murmured something into his lover’s ear which made her cast a thoughtful, considering gaze back at the moaning, rocking miqo’te on the floor.
A smile suddenly curved cruel lips and the courtiers- save for the Consort- felt flutters of fear race through them. That expression boded ill for someone. “Take her to the General’s quarters. Inform him that I am tasking him, personally, with her recovery and well-being- as well as her education in the ways of the Court. Perhaps once she has regrown her tongue, she might be more informed on it’s proper use as a servant.” Several of the courtiers tittered, others shared glances as this masterful move by the monarch could significantly change the political board. The General, out of favor since the collapse of his campaign and relegated to his own lodge out in the territories, was being given a rare chance to redeem himself.
As the Queen-Mother and the Crimson King swept out of the room, only the two tall Lords remained behind. One, with a gentleness that belied his previous actions, took one of the tall drink glasses from a table and gave it to Zareen, encouraging her to drink the liquid as she began to go into shock. She could not fight it- not once she felt the soothing cool running down her throat and easing the incredible pain on the stump of her tongue. He removed his cloak and wrapped it around her while the other Lord frowned.
“You shouldn’t do that.” He grumbled, eyeing his companion as he lifted Zareen in a bridal carry. “You know what she is.”
“I do. I remember what we were, too. So do you, even if you pretend you don’t.” The first Lord retorted sharply.
Silenced, the second man frowned and looked away. “Those memories are useless. You need to let them go. They’ll only cause you trouble. Which causes me trouble.”
“Mmm. Pretend I’m doing it to curry favor with a potential playing piece if you want.” The Lord carrying Zareen said as the two began to walk to the stables. They would need to ride to the General’s lodge.
The other snorted derisively. “You think she is going to be anything but a pawn? You’re more delusional than I thought.”
“Who’s to say? Better to hedge my bets than dismiss a possibility out of hand.”
The other grunted, unable to argue with that.
And even in her pain and suffering, Zareen clutched the gift of that cloak close to her naked body.
She’d been in the cage, in the dark, for so long that her eyes had forgotten what natural light was. Pupils perpetually as wide as they could go when she bothered to open her eyes at all. They were vulnerable parts, so she gave them what little protection she could behind her lids. They were functionally useless, anyway. Her ears and nose and skin and less definable senses were more important here- even if none of them were really reliable anymore.
This world in it’s perpetual, unshifting darkness and it’s denizens that did not bother to count the minutes, the bells, the days, the moons, the years- decades? Centuries?- it had made it impossible for her to count these things, too. She’d tried, at first- marking each awake-time as ‘day’ though she knew that all the training she’d undergone as a young huntress meant that the space of several suns probably passed before she was too exhausted to continue walking the timeless space of the hall. Her sleep was always disturbed, too. Noises, whispers, presences too close for safety. That unceasing jangling of her nerves that she was in danger and constantly surrounded by the Void.
At least in the hall there had been light of a fashion.
Here, where she had been thrown… there was none of that. The gibbering howls and snuffles and grunts of the other animalistic hunting-things in the ‘kennel’ was only slightly muffled by the depth of the hole the cage was built into. When her keeper opened the hatch above to drop down food and drink- if one could call whatever indescribable things he gave her by those names- he always put out the lamps before he did, cackling at her in a tongue she still did not understand but could gather the meaning of. ‘Eat up. Eat the filth like a good starving animal.’
He must be able to see her, somehow. Or feel her. Whenever she tried to sleep, when her mind could take no more and sought to escape into dreams or simple unconsciousness, she would be unceremoniously awoken in some jarring- and often painful- way. There seemed to be no infection here- at least, nothing that was not caused intentionally- and whatever was in the fluid she was given insured she healed unnaturally and agonizingly swiftly. ...If they wanted her to be.
Her body swayed unconsciously as broken bits of songs, rhymes, jokes, stories fell from her lips in incomprehensible tangles of the Jaguar and Eorzean tongues, mumbled and scrambled. She was starving and her lips were cracked with thirst. The gilded collar around her throat and the shackles at her wrists chafed until her skin wept. The cage was not tall enough for her to stand and was just barely wide enough for her to stretch out her arms fully. She was forced to crouch, or crawl, or sit, or curl into a ball. She was fairly certain she was sitting with her back to the wall of the cage. Though in complete darkness, in sleepless semi-delirium, it was really impossible to say what was up or down. She could be on her back against the top of the cage, floating. The cage was square- so what would it matter?
As she sat- or floated- or layed on her back- the person that was once miqo’te, Y’zareen, Jaguar, Sin-Eater appeared in the dark of closed or open eyes. She shone with an inner light and the caged huntress hissed and tried to shut the vision out, lifting her arms to block it away.
The voice was familiar. It was one-and-many. Masculine, feminine, all in between. Snarl, purr, roar, whisper, and coo. Jaguar, Eorzean, the chirps and trills of Huntspeak.
“Do not forget the light.”
Mmpph. Useless, that. The world was darkness and would ever be darkness. Too small for her to stand, just wide enough for her to stretch out her arms. Cackling and jeering, muffled sounds, food that had no substance, drink that allowed endless torment. Ever and ever and unending.
“No. Remember.”
The glow increased and she snarled at it, baring fangs. It was the first actual, coherent, voluntary noise she’d made in recent memory and it surprised her. Anchored her, just a little. She was lying on her back with her butt against the wall of the cage and her legs outstretched, hands on her stomach. Rolling over, she pushed herself up to a proper seated position. The world tilted and she grasped her head as she retched, dizziness engulfing her. There was nothing to bring up, but the act of retching was another anchor. This was her body.
“That’s a start.” The glow diminished a little as the shining creature sat next to her in a companionable way. She stared at it, at the features that kept shifting- familiar, vaguely, every one of them, but she could not recall them. Lost dreams.
“Not good enough. Remember.”
The snarl-snap of the voice made her recoil in anticipation of pain. More pain to come, though, if she did what she was told.
She rebelled, lashing out at the glowing dark. It dissipated into flames that washed over her and set her to screaming, thrashing, burning, the stench of flesh and blood and hair burning so strong in her nose-
Gone.
She was seated with her back to the wall of the cage and her hands over her face like a child. She could feel the calluses on her fingertips and the prick of claws and the grime. Her hands fell away. The flames were gone. In the darkness across from her was a shadow, sitting calmly, feline, with tail curled around it’s paws. Glimmer of eyes in the dark.
“Mm. Closer. Good. More.”
She was tired. She didn’t want to. Fuck this. Fuck that. Who was this to demand anything of her? Fire stirred in her breast.
“Better. Remember.”
The buzzing of cicadas. The scent of green and growing things. Teeth white in a smile- not her but someone she cared about. Her heart beating quick and sure and strong. Muscles moving smoothly as she ran and leapt, air rushing past her.
Her lips cracked at the now-unfamiliar and yet involuntary smile. Blood ran down her chin, into her mouth, and she licked it up, caught it with her fingers and sucked them clean despite the grime. It tasted good- like fire, like honey, like spice and smoke, like life.
She could feel her heartbeat. Thudding. It was good.
The huntmaster watched impassively as the most unruly and dangerous of his charges, placed under his hand by the Queen-Mother herself for taming, began to stir in the pit. No matter what he’d done, he hadn’t been able to heal the wounds she’d given him- ichor still seeped through the bandages on his arm and torso, weakening him slowly and steadily. The Queen-Mother had been thrilled.
Nothing survived the pit. That had been true in the days of darkness and the time before it, too, when he’d been called the Houndmaster and the beasts in his charge had equal parts feared and loved him. Had it a mind, it would break down there- that was unquestionable. A matter of time- and so long as he remained in the good graces of the Court, he needn’t worry about that. This one had been so very close- when they start rambling, it was always a signifier that the self was breaking down and fading away. A self is a dangerous thing to allow a hunting beast. They start getting ideas.
As he watched, the strange creature in the pit interacted and reacted to that which was not there, and, impossibly, rather than it’s visions continuing to erode it into the smooth slate he required, he could tell even from far above that it was- over the long course of time- steadily starting to rebuild.
His wounds ached. Dissatisfaction burned like bile in his throat. He’d never, ever failed to break one of his beasts to his will and as coherent, though alien, words began to rise from the pit he knew he must announce his failure to his monarch.
Zareen didn’t know how long it had been that she’d been in the pit. But she knew the moment the huntmaster walked away with heavy footfalls. She curled into a corner of the cage, and smiled, and slept, with her visions wrapped around her.
The Lord that paced in his chambers with the loud clopping of hooves was in a fine, fine fury. Attended by only a few- perhaps ten or so Lords and Ladies of low status (which only irked him more)- he was in the midst of an impassioned rant.
“That wily little bitch manages to survive not only the forest and my hunters, but the endless hall! And she’s welcomed! Filthy creature is actually given a chance! The Queen-Mother knows what she is- she knows what she’s done. Did you see the way she looked at me?! She was laughing at me!”
He looks around as all the attendants make noises of commiseration, shaking their heads. His hooves crash down on the floor as he stomps before resuming his pacing, hands clenching into fists. “If I kill her out-right, the Queen-Mother will be displeased. I can’t risk it- I’m already disgraced when I should be triumphant. Cast down, relegated to… this.” He looked around again with a sneer and the attendants unanimously expressed the unfairness of his plight.
His eyes gleamed suddenly as an idea occurred and he snapped his fingers at a slave. “Fetch me the Huntsmaster. I hear he has the bitch in his kennels. Perhaps we can come to an...agreement.”
The murmurs of appreciation for the Lord’s cleverness soothe his ego as he starts to lay his plans.
The illusion of freedom can sometimes be a more heady sensation than freedom itself, the hunting cat mused. The gilded shackles on her wrists and the collar locked tight around her throat were no less present but when the horns sounded and the gates opened wide into the dark and twisted wilderness of the Void, her blood pumped wild in her veins and she leapt forward along with the rest of the eclectic hunting pack. Some of them belled in hound’s voices, others- like her- remained silent and dashed forward with her. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a small group of three suddenly veer off from the pack.
Their punishment was swift and absolute- ichor splattering the ground as one of the Lords or Ladies turned their weapons upon the disobedient. Laughter, or what passed as laughter, passed through the congregation.
She had no more time to think after that. There was prey to be found, to be flushed, to be driven out for The Great Hunt’s sport. The Queen-Mother and Crimson King both rode out today and she would be competing directly with the chimeric children of the Court’s monarch. She must be extra clever, extra skilled, extraordinary. The hunting cat still retained enough of herself to know, down in her bones, that she was meant for more than this.
For this moment, though, a scent drifted through her senses and she gave herself fully to the instinct of the Hunt.
((VERY NSFW, explicit, tw:body horror, tw:death, tw:icky sex stuff (not sure what else to call it), tw:blood, tw:torture. Please mind the warnings!!!))
The Umbral Lady sat delicately on the edge of a stool in front of a huge vanity. Her mask gazed at her with blank eyes from a stand. The top of the vanity was scattered haphazardly with jewelry, cosmetics, and hair implements. Weary green eyes were half-closed as she slowly combed her wet hair, the waves and curls unruly after the long, long bath she had indulged in. The Queen-Mother had sent her a ‘gift’ that had been delivered personally by the Crimson King that she had made much of enjoying under his glowing red eyes, knowing he would report her reaction back to his Queen.
The smooth motion of her comb stutters and catches painfully on a snag. Her painted lips turn down and her eyes narrow as her hand trembles, betraying her. She moves her gaze to the mirror where she watches her hand shake with a calm detachment.
The thing that had once been many things had been crafted together with an eye for tortured ecstasies and aesthetics. A chaise lounge, of sorts, at first glance. Pillows molded in strange ways, unable to be removed from the greater structure so no matter how one sat or lounged upon it there were curves that seemed designed to conform exactly to her measurements but also force her into just-barely-uncomfortable positions. Moving her fingers over smooth marble-white flesh, ink-black fur, flexible scales, and textures that she still had no true name for, her voice indicated a vicious smile as she exclaimed her wonder. --Oh gods, oh gods it was alive. Oh gods she could hear it screaming INSIDE somehow. Her lips trembled and parted in a silent scream of her own. She wanted to be sick, she felt sweat break out on her face as the blood rushed from her head.--
The Crimson King had, so helpfully, suggested then assisted in removing her dress. She had not missed the way his breath had caught in his chest as his gloved fingers barely touched her skin and she had moved away from him with predatory grace before he could touch her further, casting him a glance over her shoulder through narrowed eyes behind her mask, which remained firmly in place. --He’s dangerous. He’s far too dangerous. He remembers when I came. He knows my name from the times before. I can’t let him linger. Can’t push him away. Dance, dance carefully, dance boldly, never stop moving.--
The Crimson King had put her dress safely on the bed where it would not get rumpled before moving to stand behind the back of the chaise, his hands resting on what could only be shaped bone. --He was going to watch. Please gods, please no. Don’t make me do this, I can’t do this. I can’t sit on that thing, I can’t touch it, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t pleasenopleasepleaseplease--
She sat gracefully on one of the cushions that seemed specifically scooped to hold a seated figure. The back of the lounge in this place had a stripe of fur that was rabbit-soft that pressed and tickled right along her spine and up to the back of her neck. The seat was palest-pale white and very cool to the touch, making a chill run through her. One arm seemed encouraged to rest along the back ‘cushion’. Just as she was turning her head to remark to the King on the unique comforts of the gift she felt movement beneath her thighs. Her stomach fluttered as something hot, painfully hot, slender and pointed and slightly nubbly moved up between her thighs, leaving a slick trail along her skin that made her skin twitch. She did not jump up or move away, just lazily spread her thighs to observe what was touching her with a carefully modulated sound of pleasant surprise. --It’s a TONGUE. It hurts, it’s too hot, what is that stuff it’s leaving on me? It’s going to- don’t stop breathing. Can’t be sick. Why does it move that way?! Nothing should move that way! I can’t. I can’t.--
A hairline crack wound it’s way through her reflection. Almost imperceptible. Keep combing your hair, smooth and clean and shining. You don’t see anything. You don’t feel anything. Everything is as it should be. She is the Umbral Lady of the Court of Delights. She is untouchable. Unflinching. Favored by the Queen-Mother. Desired and detested, just as the powerful should be. She smoothed through the snag as her shaking hand steadied, her other fingers trailing down the lock of hair as the comb moved through it. She stroked the comb through again, and again, and again, and a cool, wet curl brushed against her bare ribs.
She had let her head fall back, moaning wantonly as the tongue had curled and twisted, the mildly acidic nature of the so-slick saliva leaving just a bit of pain in it’s trail. Her eyes had remained half-open, gazing up at the Crimson King as her hips began to move in time with the strokes, her own fluids perfuming the air with desire. The gasp pulled from her when the tongue thrust roughly into her was not entirely feigned and as it started to thrust and curve and move inside her, she writhed as if it was the most delicious thing she’d ever experienced. The Crimson Kings’ eyes didn’t move, didn’t blink, devouring her. She let the chaise do what it was designed to do and watched him watching her. --He’s angry. He’s so, so angry. Near-crazed. His madness is on my tongue. He wants- he always takes what he wants, why does he not touch me? She must have forbidden it. Pay attention, pay close attention, ignore the body, it’s not important. It hurts it hurts it hur- no. No. Pay attention. His eyes. His ambitions.--
As her climax crested and her body arched, the chaise revealed the truth of the game: the fur along the back rippled and rose and as she writhed in orgasm the fur was needles, tiny spines piercing her skin deep and injecting a poison that made her blood burn. Pleasure was pain, it went beyond pleasure, the scream that she gave was agonized and hungry.
Another crack that she did not see, wending it’s way through the mirror-glass. Her lips were curved lightly into a dreamy smile. Her eyes fixed on her reflection, watching herself watch herself. There was something inside her that was still screaming. No. No. Nothing inside her at all. She is the Umbral Lady, that’s all she is. Nothing hides behind the mirror in her eyes. Nothing friable and crumbling. Nothing that has finally found it’s limit after uncounted centuries. No memories of green and growing places. No memories of genuine smiles, of love, of a life. She combed her hair slowly, the steady motions a matter of muscle memory. She lifted the long, long strands so she could focus on the ends.
Her hand was trembling again.
Now that she knew what the Queen-Mother wanted, she could only dedicate herself to learning every little secret and taking every onze of pleasure and pain that the monarch had deigned to present her with. The Crimson King stood as if rendered inanimate as she rose when the tongue had finally withdrawn and the needles had receded and smoothed back down into rabbit-like fur that her blood left shiny and slightly matted. She stretched with her back to the King, then turned to gaze at the lounge before moving towards it once more. Laying down on her back, she slung her legs over the arm of the chair and lifted her arms over her head. The curvature of the ‘cushions’ made certain her back was arched with her head laying in a slight depression, her hands in another slight depression. The scales on the arm of the chair surged immediately, spearing her pussy so deeply that pain made her vision explode in spots of white. She had mastered herself so well that the scream she wanted to make came out in a low, lewd moan. The cock formed of scales forced her legs open enough that the King could clearly see it thrusting into her, stretching her folds wide. Her abdomen showed each time it drove into her then withdrew. The Crimson King’s eyes glowed in the dark shadows of his face. His figure shifted between it’s forms more rapidly than it normally did, flowing in stomach-churning ways. --He’s agitated. Stop watching. Don’t- don’t look at me that way. It hurts. It feels- no no no, don’t remember. Don’t think of that. That is a good place and far from this place. That place can’t be touched. That place is a dream. This place is a dream. I am no-where. I am no-one.--
The ‘trick’ developed much sooner this time- under the place where her arms rested the flesh-cushion was pushed at from below before being torn open by the blunted ends of curving rib-bones. They snapped closed around her arms and wrists before pulling them back down into the innards of the lounge. Unseen, worm-like somethings dug into her arms between the ribs, writhing under her flesh and burrowing to wrap around her bones. Just as the pain of this started to become too much the scaled cock drove the tip of itself just past her cervix and flooded her womb with ice. Numbness spread from her core to her fingertips even as she came hard, her body clenching wildly, involuntarily, hips bucking and toes curling. She flung herself from side to side as the orgasm lasted...and lasted...and lasted...the only part of herself she could feel was her frozen, stretching womb and the spasming muscles of her sex around the still-pumping and throbbing member inside her.
A wide crack in the mirror jolted violently from corner to corner, bisecting her reflection. She twitched. It had taken bells in the bath for her to feel properly warm again. Clean inside again. The water here had potions in it for healing, the properties of the Court itself would ensure that she would recover from nigh-anything. It was in the Queen-Mother’s power and she was in the Queen-Mother’s good graces. Her chest rose and fell shakily as she took a quick breath and she almost dropped the comb as her hand shook. She couldn’t stop looking into her eyes. Her expression didn’t look like her anymore. It was someone sinister and dangerous and that person meant her mortal harm. --Look away, look away, I can’t do this anymore…No more memories. Forget, forget, please forget…--
The Umbral Lady had been in a haze for some time after that while the scaled cock withdrew and the fluid it had filled her with slowly trickled out of her with every spasm that still wracked her body. Somewhere in the haze, another orgasm had seized her in it’s merciless grip. She came out of it because of a strange, unfamiliar sound. The Crimson King’s fists were clenched so tightly that the fabric of his gloves was creaking against the bone on the back of the chaise. She couldn’t tell from the way his face was shadowed but it sounded like he was grinding his teeth. --He’s almost at the end of his endurance. Outlast him. You can do this. I can do this. He hates this. Make him hate it more. Make him hate her for making him watch. Turn it into a weapon. You are the blade. Be the blade.--
Her legs were too weak and they shook too much for her to rise, so she simply shifted, turned to lay full-length on her side along the chaise with her head resting comfortably against the scaled arm that glistened with her arousal. Lazily, she began to lick it clean- and the chaise beneath her seemed to shudder. The Crimson King twitched as well and in the silence his harshly in-drawn breath was very, very loud. Her thighs twitched --do it, do it. Take the chance. Drive it deep, twist it, be the poison in his breast.-- and she shifted slightly on her hip to spread her thighs wide and expose herself, running her clawed fingertips down the curve of her breast, flicking over her perked and aching nipple before drawing down her ribs, over her hip, then dipping to spread her lower lips wide between two fingers, the third brushing across her clit. The chaise reacted violently and viciously- the flesh that made up the cushion on the back of the chair suddenly detached from the bone, strands of tendons stretching as it wrapped around her and enveloped her in a transparent, pulsing membrane from shoulders to toes. The fur-needles that had assaulted her spine wrapped around her breasts in a mockery of the chest wrap she wore in another life. They rose and fell just enough to prick at her in undulating waves. Her spread legs were trapped in that position, her hand pinned as it spread her open.
The chaise itself began to excrete something that smelled faintly of sweat, faintly of musk, strongly of sex. The pheromones made her head swim. It smelled of rut. It smelled of heat. It smeared across her skin as the Queen-Mother’s gift began it’s next assault. Lips formed and sucked toothlessly at her while tongues laved her skin in transparent, veined tendrils. Something blunt pressed at her nether entrance- wide enough that she could not suppress a wince. Something tapered slid into her dripping sex, pulsing in vibrations that made her moan and gasp as it steadily started to widen, it’s shape changing inside her as it started to move in slow, achingingly slow, steady thrusts. Withdrawing all the way before pressing deep, deeper, breeching her cervix once more. She cannot look all the way down her curves but she can see enough to know that what is filling her and moving inside her is nigh-transparent, showing every time her inner walls flex and milk at the shapes that are giving her torturous pleasure.
The Crimson King’s breathing is audible now, the grinding of his teeth giving her a deeper pleasure than anything that the cruel gift could ever draw out of her body. His hands are clenched so tightly on the bone of the chaise that it’s starting to splinter and as she is coaxed to ride the edge of an orgasm that she knows she will not be allowed to have, there is a clear and quiet place in her mind that wonders idly how he will explain that to the Queen-Mother. The screaming voice in her is briefly quelled. The thrusting inside her starts to alternate and the thwarted fury and desire in the Crimson King’s gaze paired with the quieting of the broken screaming in her soul allows her to surrender mindlessly to the pleasure that so-swiftly becomes pain as she is over-stimulated to the point of sweet tears. She feels every bit of it when the claws that the Queen-Mother had cleverly concealed beneath the soft cushions of flesh unfurled and began to rake down her back, along her thighs, across her taut belly. Her blood flowed and was licked away nearly as fast as it flowed, the tortured screams of the beings trapped in the ‘gift’ becoming high and wild with pleasure in their torment. The Crimson King, enraptured, trembled with hatred as the Umbral Lady came...and came...and came…
The destruction of the mirror was sudden, if inevitable. One moment there, cracked but still there. The next, only a wooden frame empty of silvered glass as powder drifted in the still air. The once-opulent wood was left friable and as the Umbral Lady set down her comb on the top of the vanity, it began to crumble and fall away like sand trickling into the bottom of an hourglass.
((Beginning with this entry, I will be jumping around the timeline of Zareen’s experience in the Void. Future entries may or may not be chronological.))
The distinctive click of clawed feet paired with the whisper of velvety skirts against the cold stone floor announced the arrival of the woman that some had taken to calling ‘The Umbral Lady’ (and others, mostly out of her exceptional hearing, termed “the shadow whore” amongst other more or less colorful titles). The various nobility, advisors, toadies, servants, pets, and slaves noted her entry into the room- it was hard not to, with the elaborate mask and headdress she wore and the vivid green and gold of her attire that drew attention to her dark skin, she was a bright point of color in a Court that tended to follow a trend of monochromatic blacks and greys against long expanses of bared skin so as to avoid drawing the possibly-jealous eye of the Queen-Mother or her long-time Consort, the Crimson King.
As she moved amongst the assembly with her proud head held high, she adroitly navigated the perilous waters of the vicious and powerful social elite. Her low voice teased and cajoled, warmly captivated, skillfully turned barbs into compliments. The whisper of dark clawed fingertips across skin promised cruel pleasures and the curve of her furred tail brushing or thudding against a body elicited shivers even from those who despised her. Those who had survived her bed chambers did not speak of their experiences but their bodies were indelibly marked with scars that had been filled with molten gold. She had no favorites though many vied for the position. Some from actual desire, many from ambition, and the rare, rare, rare few who had heard the whisper, the ghost, of a rumor…
A rumor that said that the slaves of the Court had another name for her. That they called her “The Emerald” after a belief beyond ancient, from the fabled times before the days of darkness. They said the color of her eyes, vivid green, marked her as different- a being out of place and time, who had come to the Court of Delights from another world where there was yet life and light and kindness. The slaves and pets in her care were utterly devoted and the stories of her rages when one of those marked ‘hers’ was harmed by another were nigh-legend amongst both high and low. A feat amongst a Court marked even by other Courts as a bastion of debasement.
The rumors also held that she could grant one true, eternal freedom. Rest.
A crystalline bell rang out, cutting through the socialization of the room like a blade. A summons to entertainment. Tension and anticipation went through the collective like a wave- the Umbral Lady included- and as those privileged enough to have permissions to observe and participate moved to one of the inner chambers she was amongst them, vying with the best for pride of place.
The Queen-Mother of the Dark Court of Delights idly ran her fingers over the head of one of her favorites, the succubus cooing softly under her Lady’s ministrations as the royal attention was focused on her mirror-table. Several attendants moved around the room and the grand figure of the monarch on her couch and a sound that would scratch insistently and discordantly against a rational mind played softly through the room as if it was the most pleasant of chamber music. Various conversations occurred around the well-populated room between advisors, attendants, and guards and there was the occasional sharp punctuation of a shriek, a groan, the rhythmic smack of flesh-against-flesh that acted simply as background noise- unnoted and unremarked.
The walls were hung with bright and shining treasures, elegant sconces, beautiful gilded picture frames, heavy velvet-like curtains- and in-between or displayed by these treasures were nightmare sculptures of flesh and bone and skin of all kinds, twisted into agonized shapes like some form of living bonsai. On one, the observer could watch as a heart suspended in a net of veins and arteries beat frantically, pushing the ichor that served as blood out to the wreath of flesh that had been formed around it. Another was a flowing, ever-undulating, ouroboros of a figure that devoured itself while also birthing itself. Similar tableaux dotted the room, some more interactive than others.
A masculine figure stood behind the couch, his figure shifting unnervingly between something recognizable as a Hyuran male, to a hulking shadowed mass, to a serpentine thing with eyes like mirrors, to a minotaur-like figure. In all forms, though, his eyes were shadowed and burned with a red light. He, too, watched the mirror table- the only other one in the room currently given that honor.
Those burning red eyes were fixed on the feline figure that was limping through the great hall, following some primitive instinct as she would suddenly stop, turn, and take a different direction or retrace her steps. The mirror table did not capture how brightly she shone, not fully, but it was enough for him to be enchanted. A potentially unwise state of being in the Queen-Mother’s Court.
The fact that the monarch was so avidly observing the figure as well, however, led him to boldness. His many-layered voice was a deep rumble that sent shivers through those near enough to hear it. “My Lady appears to be quite taken by the sport that wanders Her lovely halls.”
“Mm.” The reply was dismissive but she reached out and touched the glass so the view zoomed in, showing the subject’s face and upper body more clearly. The Queen-Mother’s silence stretches before she replies in a many-layered voice of her own- one that buzzes and drills into the mind. “She is ...unique.”
The room stilled. That single word has unfathomable weight to it in this Court and even the living art seem to hold it’s breath or muffle it’s eternal screaming to hear what more the Queen-Mother might pronounce.
“We will watch and see if she continues to correctly navigate the hall. Once she reaches the first inner chamber, I desire that she be approached by some of the fodder. We will see how she responds to that.” A cruel smile of anticipation moved across the surface of the Queen-Mother’s face and every lesser being in the room felt their insides churn. It took a few moments for conversation to resume as it became clear that the Queen-Mother would say no more.
At least, not aloud.
Look at her shadow. Watch it when she stops and decides which turn to take.
The man behind the throne was too well-trained to wince when that insistent buzzing burned the letters on the wall of his mind. He turned his attention from those intense green eyes to the feline woman’s shadow as the view in the mirror drew back once more. The many sources of blue flame made seeing any single shadow difficult as she moved but when she stopped…
The massive shape moved exactly as she did with only the slightest adjustment made for four legs instead of two. When she stopped, it wrapped around her so she stood at it’s heart. When she moved, it faded until it was almost invisible. He and the Queen-Mother observed together as the woman and her shadow unerringly, instinctively, trod upon the exact path that would lead her to their Court.
She didn’t know how long she’d been left there, bound and alone. Or at least, visibly alone. Moving shadows passed by her in the corner of her eyes and strange whispers assaulted her ears but every time she’d turn her head or swivel her ears to focus they would melt away. Stubborn creature that she was, she gnawed at her viney bonds, straining and pulling until her wrists were raw, her jaw locked, and her injured shoulder could take no more. She’d lay then, panting through the pain, exhausted, furious, and alone. Sometimes she slept, though the light never changed and she had no way of knowing how long.
When she would awaken, she sometimes caught a closer glimpse of one of those shadow-figures. A black-masked being in a hooded robe reappeared several times- it was one of the few figures that she saw that ever lingered long enough for her mind to actually make sense of what she was seeing. All the others just seemed like strange amalgamations of flesh or stone or foliage, or sometimes all three. Usually flesh.
This changed the day she finally tore through enough of the vines to free herself. Feeling them give way sent such a strong burst of adrenaline through her that she did not pay close enough attention and her fangs found not only vine but flesh. She didn’t even notice- not until after she’d shredded the bonds around her ankles with her claws and roared her victory and defiance into the semi-dark. Stretching after such a long, long time held in an unnatural curl took her breath away- it felt wonderful and it hurt so badly that she could not help but whimper as cramps wracked her figure.
She was lying flat on her back, arms and legs outstretched, when she felt a strange, unpleasant sensation at one bleeding wrist. Reflex made her try and pull it away, only to have her wrist and entire hand seized in something wet. Where the wetness touched flamed with pins and needles, the burn of stinging nettle, the soothing cool of a fresh spring, the sensual heat of a lover’s tongue sucking at her fingers one by one. The two opposing sensations made her head snap to the side to look at what was happening. A wolf-thing, hairless and pink and hideously scarred, with two stunningly beautiful Hyuran faces, was lapping at her now-numb wrist and hand. Four tongues- two to each mouth and impossibly long and slender- were licking at the blood from the small wounds her fangs had opened and trailing along the lines the blood had made across her palm and on her fingers. Their eyes were rolled back in ecstasy and to her horror the wolf-like body’s hips were jerking at the air.
The miqo’te didn’t think, just reacted- bringing her other hand across to slash viciously at those impossibly beautiful faces and those long tongues, bringing her claws to bear. The creature was unprepared for the attack and she sliced through two of the tongues and half-severed a third, sharp claws tearing across one’s cheek, nose, and lips and the other’s lips and cheek. It reared back and let loose a cry that forced the miqo’te to curl into a ball, ears pressed flat as she tried to cover them with both hands, eyes closed in pain, trembling with mortal fear. The sound echoed, and echoed, and echoed through the arches of the huge hall and the shadowed figures that she couldn’t quite see went still for the first time, attention turned to her as the whispers grew louder.
They were still whispering when she lowered her hands and uncurled, ears perking as she sat up, then stood on shaking legs. The wound in her calf almost made her buckle but with much lashing of her tail she managed to put all her weight on her good leg and keep upright. She felt the weight of the stares and slowly looked around her with a baleful green gaze, lips curled back and fangs bared. It might have been pathetic- a lone figure rendered tiny by the scope of her setting, standing defiant and proud as innumerable figures of all shapes and sizes surrounded her.
It might have been pathetic. But it was novel. It was interesting. And to the one creature lounging on an opulent throne and her many attendants and advisors, gazing into the glassy surface of the table that showed a view of the endless hall was a delight such as they hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Not just a feast, oh no. An opportunity.
